Ronald Walker: What an honor it is for us to be here with you, we’re honored by your presence, and by all this attention, historians aren’t used to this kind of, this kind of excitement, so thank you so much. I think what we want to do tonight is each one of us take maybe five, six, seven minutes to give you a feel for the book, and some of our thinking about the book, and then I think the uh, the vast majority of the time, I think we all agree should be Q&A. That’ll be the most fun.
Richard Turley: I would like to talk a little bit about our methodology in writing the book, when we launched this project, our goal was not to work principally from the secondary sources that had been created in the past, but rather to find every primary source that we could find, and then let that evidence tell the story, and that task sent us, or those who were assisting us across the country looking for Mountain Meadows Massacre information, because this was a celebrated case during it’s time, and because the people who either participated in the massacre or later investigated it got scattered across the country, the bits and pieces were scattered like a giant jigsaw puzzle across the continent.
Glen Leonard: In his comments in reviewing the book prior to publication, Richard Bushman mentioned this, “Though I knew the end from the beginning, I began to sweat as the narrative approached its fatal climax. The authors won’t let us turn our gaze away from the horrors of that moment”. One of the copy editors said something similarly, “this is a page turner, she said”. [pause] I’d like to turn a few pages. I’d like to take you into the book, and give you a sample of the narrative, as an illustration of what we were trying to accomplish by taking the facts, drawing our conclusions, and then casting them into a narrative voice.
Curt Bench: I’m sure you will agree that was a tremendous, brief presentation, a good introduction to the book. Now we’d like to entertain any questions you may have, if you’d like to raise your hand we’ll get to you as soon as we can, and if you have a certain author in mind, just designate that OK.
Q: To any and all of you, is it true that they, the perpetrators held prayer circles just prior to the massacre? And if so what does this say about their mindset at the time?
Thank you for your kind intro, Chris. What follows is a general response, or superstructure, to eight points Matt B. wrote for his discussion group, which he will be posting soon:
Art is dangerous. The person who fully engages with any piece of art runs the risk of being changed/transformed in fundamental ways. And many times we don?t control the ways in which we are transformed (both good and bad). I am a passionate proponent of art, not opponent as these statements might make me sound. We should be wary of those who uncritically guard against such transformation through blind prohibition of certain kinds of art. Such prohibitions can arise out of fear. But we should also be wary of artworks that offer transformation carte
Q: For Turley, In 1856, also during reformation, over 200 died in handcart disaster…given that F. D. Richards urged the group forward, blind faith, not questioning authority…a connection?
I suppose every author wants to be read… [There is] humility involved when the book is read by such great scholars.As Dr. Faragher reminds us, the West could be a violent place and that statement was understated. That’s the theme though that we should have developed more, we did develop it in greater form in the manuscript. Page count precluded us from including all that we wanted to.For every paragraph in the book two or three ended up on the cutting room floor…we could only touch the peaks of the story hoping that others can come after us and fill out these [gaps].
Fixico…I’m not Paiute…I’m Shawnee…I’d like to thank you for coming out…8 on Friday night, you could be anywhere else…I appreciate the support of all the organizations…let me begin with saying this work is monumental…a role model for scholarship, and the kind of book scholars want to write, pivotal books cause change to happen, changes of thinking and cause us to address new questions.American Indians are part of the story, but not main part.
In the context of Mormon historiography this, as a piece of scholarship, is a formidable work, monumental accomplishment….My task here is an opportunity to think of the implications of the book.What does the massacre teach us about Mormonism? About religion and its potential for good or evil…Is religion sick?The answer is sometimes, sometimes not.
It was standing room only tonight at the Salt Lake City Public Library’s main auditorium for a panel discussion about the recently published Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Panelists were John Mack Faragher, Donald Fixico, and Phil Barlow with Richard Turley responding. I spied Ardis busily typing away on what will be her own summary of the evening at her blog Keepapitchinin. I spied a number of notables in attendance including Will Bagley, Katherine Daynes, Elder Marlin K. Jensen, Steve Olsen and others. All in all the event was well executed and informative, so my congratulations to the many organizations and persons who combined to make it possible. The whole of the proceedings were recorded and will be made available as a podcast on Monday. We’ll be sure to provide a link to it in the sidebar when it becomes available. My notes I will here give in portions, and are largely taken verbatim, but for clarity I have paraphrased and placed some clarifying portions in brackets. John Mack Faragher, professor of history at Yale University was the first speaker:
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